To One Left Behind in Paradise
by cagd
Summary: While out walking one night after being chipped, Spike stumbles upon an unusual grave by the side of the Coastal Highway.


It was the kind of place that you might find only once in a lifetime, particularly if you weren't looking for it. 

So maybe it was dumb luck when he found it - he'd passed it many times in the dark, in his beat up old car, on foot, pursuing prey, and now, on his long, silent walks because there wasn't anything left for him to do.

He'd taken to walking after he'd been muzzled - nobody knew that he'd do fifty or more miles every night, mouth dry, nerves twanging, guts screaming because he could never completely fill them the way they wanted, no _needed_, to be filled. He'd gone through two pairs of Doc Martins already. It looked like pair number three needed to be shoplifted pretty soon - humiliatingly enough from some Women's department because his feet were unusually small and narrow for a man's.

Tonight found him counting the yellow dashes down the center of the highway that clung precariously to the cliffs that overlooked the Pacific, 1. 2. 3... 5,000. He had the highway to himself - all decent folk had gone to bed, and the indecent ones? Well, they'd bedded down for the night too, once again leaving him suspended between Heaven and Hell; neither side wanting him enough to come claim him.

His footsteps rattled off the cliff face on one side, to be drowned out by the breakers on the other. The wind kept blowing out his lighter so he'd left the highway and hunkered down on his worn heels among the mesquite and weeds out of the wind, watching the mooncast shadows of the clouds ripple across the rocks and seafoam below, taking one long drag after another from the unfiltered Marlboroughs he favored whenever he could steal them.

He realized that the stone he was leaning against wasn't natural; that he was surrounded by brush choked graves, slowly tumbling into the sea, one-by-one-by-one like so many marble dominos.

His fingers traced the names, nobody he knew, not that he cared. Lighting another cigarette he stood up, pausing, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, nostrils scenting the breeze: sea, sagebrush, wild rosemary, a distant orange grove in bloom were all that he got. Nobody had been here for a long time, nobody cared if the graves disappeared into the sea.

So he walked among the broken angels and shattered lambs beneath the pepper trees, the oleanders, the intruding mesquite, all tinder dry and ready to go up at the slightest spark, his shadow wavering, taller than he would ever be. He teetered on the edge, pushed a stone with the name Stahlmayer carved on it over with one scuffed boot, the crash of it's landing far below lost in the breakers.

That's when he saw the little crypt.

It wasn't as big as the one he held squatter's rights to - it would accommodate a single coffin, maybe some flowers. There was something dainty, feminine about it, like a wedding cake rendered in marble. He approached, curious maybe, but more interested in standing out of the wind in its doorway to light another cigarette.

The sea was only five feet from it's threshold.

All it would take would be one more El Niño and it would fall into the sea unregarded.

The flare of his Zippo lit up the name on the corroding bronze door, "Beatrice Tulley-Moss"

He paused, flame the only thing moving, reflecting from his eyes - so this was where it had all ended. His cousin, sweet Beatrice was buried here where the wild chamomile bloomed and the seabirds nested.

It was almost as unreal as the time he'd found himself standing fifty years after the fact outside a junk shop window in London, looking in at a faded portrait of his mother with him as a boy standing beside her.

He dimly recalled a very small boy of seven staring timidly out at the world from eyes that couldn't see twelve inches past his own face so he was constantly being berated for his clumsiness and stupidity, being sent off to school in the British countryside; the loud voices, the bullying, the humiliations, the caning he'd received for being unable to recite from the blackboard because it was all a senseless blur to him, of being so upset he'd thrown up on the schoolmaster's shoes, of the extra caning he'd received for such insolence, of being teased for his size, soft brown curls and big blue eyes - of going to bed one long ago miserable night and waking up feverish, one leg suddenly stiff and pulling up toward his belly. Of the little coffins of his schoolmates who hadn't survived the sudden epidemic of infantile paralysis that had ripped it's way through the hated academy, lined up in the courtyard when the family barrister came to take him home to die of polio.

He hadn't died and Beatrice, his cousin who was seventeen, had sent him a letter.

Nobody had ever sent him a letter before. It was written on pretty pink paper with violet ink and smelled very, very nice. The nurse hired to tend to him had read the letter to him over and over again as he lay staring out of the window at the falling snow which was nothing but a white blur, running his fingers over and over the red wax seal of her initials on the back of the envelope.

He'd never met Beatrice, but she said in her letter that they were cousins and cousins should always take care of each other, and that she was very sorry to hear that he was ill.

A basket of hothouse grapes and a handful of toy soldiers had come after that along with a note written with the same violet ink on pink paper.

It was soon followed by a little packet of watercolor sketches of the seashore at Brighton - which was where she was living with her papa, a retired Admiral in the British Navy, and her six older brothers and sisters, some of who were married and had many little boys and girls - so many she'd lost count. Some of the pictures had children in them - maybe they were _his_ cousins?

He'd written her a note back on a page torn from one of his composition books - the nurse had posted it for him.

He got a lovely paper Noah's Ark, along with all the animals, Papa Noah, his wife, and children - Beatrice had painted it for him and cut it out so that he could play with them, marching them two by two along the coverlet where he lay, leg aching, wondering where his mother was. There were all sorts of animals - he'd looked them up with the help of his nurse in the battered nursery encyclopedias - zebras, lions, tigers, and strange monkeys with big noses.

One night he heard screams from behind the closed door of his mother's room as his nurse took him to the parlor to sit by the fire.

A day or so later, a little coffin, no bigger than a hatbox was taken out the front door which was below his room - he saw it being carried out in front of a procession of grown-ups by a man in black and placed in a long black wagon decorated with black feathers and pulled by two black horses.

And the little room next to his mother's suddenly was empty, all the pretty things that had appeared there as if by magic, were gone.

He knew this because that night he'd limped out of bed without his brace while his nurse snored by the fire and had gone wandering, shivering through the darkened house with its myriad locked doors, falling asleep on the cold, bare floor of the little room.

After that, there were always two nurses in the room with him.

Winter turned into spring. The letters from Beatrice kept coming. Best of all, one of them had a tiny miniature of her for him to wear on a chain around his neck like a good luck charm.

Beatrice was very, very pretty - she looked like a rose, all pink, gold and white in her picture.

He wanted to meet her - the house was dank and dreary and his mother still hadn't come to visit him

...and where was papa?

One day the doctor said that Town air was bad for both he and his mother. Sea air was the only thing.

So they got on the train and went to a place called Brighton.

Beatrice was waiting for them on the Brighton platform. From what he could see of her, she was all golden curls and big blue eyes, which looked out at the world from behind tiny round gold rimmed glasses. Like him, she was small, but dainty as the china dolls that one of his lovers years later would obsessively cherish.

She smelled...wonderful.

He fell in love with what he could see of her with all the passion a seven year old can create.

The Admiral's house, which wasn't as grand as his mother's and had no locked doors whatsoever, was full of cousins. There were little cousins on hobby horses, there were even littler cousins in cradles, big cousins in uniforms or grand dresses, fat cousins, thin cousins, loud cousins, quiet cousins, and quite few aunts and uncles too.

That evening, Beatrice sat in the in the midst of them like the eye of a benign storm with him on her lap. He thought that she might be an angel, but the angels in the big Bible his mother kept in the parlor were too sad or too stern. No, she HAD to be a fairy come out from the bottom of the garden to play with him. Later, when grown up duties called her away, his other cousins pulled him into their fireside games because it was unthinkable that he be left out of anything.

Angel or fairy, Beatrice was the one who discovered his poor eyesight when he kept falling down the nursery steps and tripping over things in plain sight. She insisted that her papa buy him spectacles like hers right away.

The Admiral had hemmed and hawed, but in the end, had done so with good humor.

The world opened up and finally started to make sense.

Which was good because in the Admiral's house, there was always something to be seen, to be done, to be explored; bad eyes were no excuse.

Neither was a limp.

Sometimes the Admiral (Who looked suspiciously like Papa Noah with his exuberantly bushy sideburns) would hire a big carriage and they would all cram themselves into it, along with picnic hampers and favorite toys, and go out into the countryside to return dirty, sunburned, and exhausted at the end of the day.

Other days were spent on the seaside - the Admiral would bring his telescope and they would take turns looking at the ships through it when they weren't running shrieking and giggling in and out of the surf. His grown-up Navy cousins took him out into the deep water and taught him to swim. His leg slowly began to stop aching so much and began to straighten out without the help of the heavy iron brace the doctor made him wear since he got sick.

On rainy days, Beatrice read poetry to them all, even to the little ones.

Formerly tongue tied, the poetry released one of the bigger knots inside him even though he didn't understand half the words. He found himself scribbling rhymes in the margins of his composition books - Beatrice had insisted that he continue with his studies even on Holiday so he carried them with him everywhere, eager to please. When she found his rhymes one day while correcting his geography, she didn't laugh.

Instead she read them very gravely and asked if she could have some for her autograph book which she kept on the piano for anyone visiting to sign. It was bound in red calfskin with gold edges and had the signatures of many very important people in it.

He was delighted.

Sometimes from a distance he saw his mother in a bath chair with a blank look on her face as a nurse pushed it along the seawall on sunny days.

Summer became fall: the Admiral's household packed up and moved to a large rented farmhouse in the country. There he played in the falling leaves, watched the charcoal burners at work, and jogged along on a short, fat pony beside his older cousins on their tall horses across the countryside.

The nights grew colder and Beatrice organized fireside games: rhyming games, musical games, plays and dances with only the family and a few favorite neighbors attending.

Beatrice turned eighteen one night. He gave her a very special little piece of paper he had hoarded with one of his best rhymes carefully written on it in longhand - one of his older Navy cousins home on leave had shown him how the letters went. They had to be just right. She smiled and put it in her autograph book.

Inside the front cover so anyone looking through the book would be sure to see it.

There was a tall man with a loud booming laugh and broad shoulders who now came to the house. The small boy didn't like him; he wouldn't stay away from Beatrice.

Beatrice only blushed whenever the tall man approached her.

He gave her gifts: fans, perfumes, simple jewelry.

Her little cousin didn't see why she liked the man; he had big feet and liked to toss the boy up into the air and catch him - which made the boy's stomach nervous.

It all came to an end at New Year's. His mother was feeling well enough to go back to Town.

He'd cried bitterly all the way to the station, remembering the cold, dark house in London with its many locked doors.

Beatrice had promised to write to him, which was some consolation.

In her next letter, she very gently told him that she was going to be married.

To the tall man.

He was from America and that she was going over the sea to live with him in his fine house.

And when he was a little older and a little bigger, would he please come and visit them in their new home by the sea? They would have a lot of room for him - her new husband was very, very rich and would be glad to have him as his guest. They would ride horses and see mountains.

When he was eight, the letters stopped coming.

Finally one came, but it wasn't from Cousin Beatrice. It was from her husband and was written on white paper with a black border.

It came with a big wooden crate with his name on it and said simply that Beatrice had died trying to have a baby, and that the tall man was very sorry to have to tell her favorite cousin this, but he had promised her that he would before she died; and that he would see to it that her favorite cousin would get her books of poetry. When he was a little bigger, would he like to come visit his newest little cousin some day and ride horses and see mountains?

He never did.

Small boys grow up and forget dreams.

The crate languished in the attic until rediscovered years later, its contents taken out and savored as comfort, as fine old wine, before being abandoned again when he died and came back.

What returned, hated all words, especially poetry because it hurt too much.

So now the not so small boy leaned back against the door of a forgotten crypt, watching the moon wander across the watery horizon, dragging slowly at a cigarette, eyes drowning in memories.

The name was common enough, it might just be a coincidence.

He pulled the cigarette down to a bare stub before flicking it over the edge in a rain of orange sparks. His fingers hesitantly traced this Beatrice's name, the dates were right, maybe? There were a lot of things that he couldn't remember clearly since dying. Then his oddly delicate hands paused.

Beneath her name there was another: "William".

If his death had left it to him, he would have broken out into a cold sweat.

The dates, the dates were less than a year apart. William had died an infant.

It was Beatrice, it had to be.

The only thing that he could do was pull the weeds and smaller trees away from the little shrine, because that's what it was. Obviously the large man with the booming laugh had loved her too because it wouldn't have been so delicate, so...fairylike. Maybe the boy forgave him a little then, but only a little because forgiveness was one of the things he'd left behind in his own emptied grave.

Before leaving, the boy decorated the door with garlands of wildflowers as the sky began to bleed pink and gold in the east: jasmine, wild honeysuckle, cactus flowers with bitter, bitter thorns, wreaths of rosemary and thyme - Beatrice would have liked that. She'd taught him how to make them one lazy summer afternoon so very long ago, out in the dunes where the wild hares danced and the secret wildflowers bloomed unseen.

It was almost a year later when he remembered to return with a stolen chainsaw slung over one shoulder to finish removing the desecrating brush.

He was too late.

The crypt was gone, washed into the sea, taking his memories of three seasons in paradise with it.


End file.
